self-help

I don’t know. I reject Paulo Coelho. I avoid the self-help aisle, believe it might be infested with cockroaches. I do not want to be on some damn journey. I just want to be solid and sure like I have been in the past.

Of course, you do like security. Like to be in the know.

Yes, I do. I’m a thinker, a student, a practical woman. Jeezus

Well, there are times in our lives when we all make changes. This is that time? for you?

I don’t know. What good do changes do if you choose the same choices the next time you have the chance? What have I learned? How many times will I take care of someone else at the expense of myself?

You are a caretaker. Why do you deny yourself this?

Because my job is not to be everyone’s everything.

Why won’t you let anyone love you?

Why doesn’t everyone stop loving me? I just want to love me. First. I want to love myself. I want to be selfish and take care of myself. Just me. Just Me.

Like this:

If I wake up tomorrow and am nowhere, does that mean I haven’t been heading somewhere? The map unfolds itself in the signs of the day to day. While making a dinner for two, I am led to a cooking class. While cutting the mango I long for a return to Hawaii. At karaoke night, the sounds of Paul Simon’s “Diamonds on the soles of her shoes,” adds adds a ticket on my living list, resigning myself to get there to hear him before he is gone.

Before we are gone.

Resisting the label of journey, it keeps finding me. I shove it out of mind along with the self-help aisle and the therapy couch; I’d rather rely on horoscopes and palm readers.

I spin my wheels in the daily carpool, in the grocery trip, again! I spin resolutions from New Years to the time when the leaves fall but aren’t measured by fractions of inches. How many inches of dead leaves does it take to predict long winters of delusions about meeting someone’s eyes across the table, the stories of my heart and head locked away behind them for safer keeping than the present season affords?

There’s a time for content leisure, a time for acceptance and grace. And there’s a time for growing older with the smug smile and declarations of no regrets.

Meanwhile, there’s reflection and challenges to grow, in some way, any way that defies the restrictions of discontent bred by unknown details that escape understanding. Too close to the cause, habits fed by old comforts and limitations, I stretch arms overhead,my back arches, my legs reach long, my toes point, then curl toward the end of the bed, sheets askew.

.

“You look good in bedsheets, love,” he says. She wonders why anyone dresses at all.

Like this:

What is this search for “happiness?” Why can’t we just let ourselves be open to receiving the best of the moment and be content with what it brings?: Why are we always pushing for more, for better, for clarity, for passion, for THE HAPPY?

I have a beloved friend battling alcoholism. She has fallen so many times. She is open to learning, does the work in self examination, AA, outpatient treatment, yoga, competitive anything.

She’s got an addictive personality. She may be an empath. She is child like in her ability to laugh with her children. She is love and light (as those in recovery will often say.)

I have learned so much from her. She has been through so much therapy. She has moments of brilliance. She has moments of darkness.

Yesterday, as we sat getting our toes done – less than 24 hours before her entry into a new inpatient alcohol addiction program- we sat and pondered our choices, where we were before, where we are now. Why we thought we were there. Where we thought we were now. And whether there really is a difference in past and present…what is it about the human spirit that sets us on this quest? Why do we seek happiness so desperately. Why not just sit, fingers outstretched, palms turned to the sky and just let ourselves trust and be open to what will be?